Sorted

I'VE SORTED out THREE pressing things today that were doing my head in.

1: the council wanted to perform a Residence Check ~ to make sure that the person living at the address really was me

2: my Service Charge payments have been messed up since I signed a form authorizing their direct withdrawal from my account. Nothing has been withdrawn, making me look like a freeloading fraudster

3: and worst of all my only bank account has been hit by FRAUDSTERS trying to take a direct debit off my account and putting it £200 in the red (that's over $300) ~ give or take a few pennies. I rang up their helpline ENRAGED and got told to enter my nearest branch where I was considerably less enraged thanks to chainsmoking and alcohol (which calms me down). Turns out nobody had tried to fraud me. A direct debit from another customer had been typed incorrectly hitting MY account not theirs. Now all £197 has been refunded and I am a fully fledged human being with a bank account once more!

Illustrated: a map of London highlighting Islington, where I don't live... or DO I??!?




HARD TRANCE



ARCHANGEL GABRIEL: TRANCE TEKNO



"AWESOME SEGMENT"

No Free Cable But Freesat Is A-Coming

I TOOK MY CABLE BOX to my friend Valium Marilyn's, unplugged hers, plugged mine in and hacked and hacked away trying to get a free signal. She even produced two free viewing cards that had been lying amongst a pile of junk mail but the cable somehow knew the serial numbers of the cards were mis-synchronized with my digibox. "Aren't they crafty bastards," said Valium Marilyn. It took over ten minutes to get her TV working again, then we watched Australian customs undercover on channel 100-and-something. Both of us were glued to the screen as some Vietnamese lollypops were slit open to reveal high grade white powder. We were slavering at the screen thinking "China white heroin!" But it was boring old coke. Cocaine from Vietnam. Whatever next. Even the customs inspector looked secretly disappointed.

I'm supposedly getting Freesat TV within the next month and a half at the longest. I'm hoping to get someone else's cancellation. I can no longer bear living with four channels of snow and endless trails for things on BBC3 and E4 and other channels everyone else seems to get in Britain apart from me.

Of course I am also supposedly moving house imminently. Which is what got me so het up about signing up for satellite television. If I get that installed surely sod's law shall come into play making me have to move out before I get my hands on at least 83 channels of free entertainment plus supposedly another 200 that I can tune in manually. You even get a horror film channel. So I'm doing what's known as Tempting Fate. Plunking down £67 on something that will really brighten my life, when my life is due to be brightened immeasurably more by this forthcoming move. True, everyone at the new house will be recovering from severe nervous breakdowns but so am I. Only a few months ago I was hearing voices every day and getting funny looks in shops. I still have to take medication and when I don't my mood plummets and sometimes I get quite paranoid. People on the street seem to be talking about me. So I take my medication albeit grudgingly. And look forward to moving house. Or satellite TV.

The pest controller came round today as we still have roaches marching around our kitchens. I showed him the Mount Everest of unsorted belongings on my double bed. We pretty much agreed it's Priority Number One that as much of these unwanted books, records, DVDs, classical albums on vinyl etc which includes at least one carrier bag full of WOMEN's clothes must go down the charity shop forthwith so that's what I'm doing. Also I HAVE to get my house tidy for the Freesat man. Otherwise I will die of shame.

My methadone is down to 70mg as of tomorrow, which I'm really pleased about. 70 mils! Wow. Never thought I'd see that day. I might actually be on less methadone now than Anna Grace out in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Now that would be one up the spout for her!

My newest to-do thing, apart from not use heroin on top of my increasingly lowly methadose, and to clear clear clear the rubble off my bed, is to GET MY COMPUTER REPAIRED. I found out if I move house I can get 30 (gigabyte(?)) broadband plus a landline phone plus 75 TV channels all for about £30 a month so I might go for that one. IF and when I move.

Well Xmas is a-coming, the geese are getting fat. Please put £20 in the drug addict's hat!

That's a traditional rhyme here in Britain. I'm not into begging up change any more. I even found a dropped purse, with money inside, on Morrison's floor. And instantly returned it. See, a change in lifestyle is possible... I just wish I could change quicker. And cut out all illicit druggie-use ALTOGETHER...

Well there we are then, as they say in Wales. I'll have to ping or else I'll get terminated!

HOT HOT HOT

I SEE DESHANE my support worker tomorrow. He mentioned two possibilities. I can move back to the inner city where I lived before. Surrounded by Jamaicans and Caribbean takeaway. Or onwards and upwards somewhere posher with wooded parkland and rich artists, pop stars and people like that. Which should I go for? 调和ulgar O shit I accidentally set this to Chinese... the vulgar shops (where I would shop) are a mere bus ride from Posh Park and I'm supposed to be getting a disabled pensioners' bus pass. Deshane is sorting that one too. I got 6xpassport pixx done today for £4. I look so YOUNG in these. Young and tanned. With hair the colour of nicotine stains (that did NOT photograph well).

I'm trying to get my friend Pinky (Perky's lesbian lover) to dye her hair purple. Schwarzkopf do an ultimate violet shade. I said I'd go for it too but she says no. Boring sow.



These are the woods near where a friend of mine used to live. They look a bit like the woods in Posh Park.

Now what d'you all think I should do? Move to the glamour of Posh Park? Or back to Jamaicaville? This is assuming I do HAVE any choice. I so hope I get to move please....

I've been in a soaring good mood today. Almost manic-like. Without the fratic racing thoughts and restlessness. I'm almost tempted not to take my meds tonight to see if I can get any higher... Know what I mean?

I hope you're all OK and not too HOT HOT HOT. It must have hit 90F today. SURELY.

Pinky owed me a £10er and paid me in a mobile phone. Brand new. I paid a £5er to get it unlocked. It works amazingly compared to the old phone that constantly blacked out and hung up on my callers...


I hope life's OK with you all...


BARBER'S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS BY TRINITY COLLEGE CHOIR, CAMBRIDGE
i have been looking for this for YEARS after I posted it up, then someone removed it from Youtube and it's back. The classic tune, set to video by Nasa... PLEASE WATCH IT
this is SUBLIME; a true classic
watch the video; it goes into outer space


RAVE 1992: A TRUE BLAST FROM THE PAST

Back from the brink (of unconsciousness)

I HAD A LOST WEEKEND: lost to sleep. I know I have been a bit depressed; I'm trying to pull myself together. Today I did everything I had to (wow). Right down to acquiring the huge tartan washing bags I'll need if I do move house. I'm TOLD I'm moving, but I really need to know for sure about this. I see Deshane tomorrow. I'm off to bed now. Another early night!

Pre Move Jitters

I'm not doing clairvoyancy by the way, as I'm afraid of getting possessed. I think the Chinese characters I see in the air from time to time are eidetic memories, not clairsentient distance-vision.

I got up after midday and wasted ages trying to get it together to take my socks off and go into the shower and go outside and up to the methadone chemist. All the time I was out I wished I was back in bed. My bed is full of rubbish so I've been sleeping on the floor. I think it's good for my back.

As well as panicking how on earth am I going to move house, I tried to fill out a government form but it was so depressing and I got a fullblow paranoia attack from doing so.

On Monday I'm buying some more huge tartan washing bags and I'm just piling my stuff into them. My Mum said she would drive me to and fro. As long as she's not in France.

I would rather move into a nutterhouse than stay where I am. But I don't want to do anything. I just want to curl up and die. Then I tell myself not to be so damn childish, that life has a purpose and I feel this sparkly light. But I have no energy whatsoever to engage with this mystical purpose in life. So that's today and here's Lady Gaga:~~~



O yeah and re heroin, I know it's bad to be a heroin addict, that's why I want to stop taking the crap. I mean "want to stop" I haven't had it for a couple of days and when I had it, it was too weak for words. THE ONLY THING THAT EVER MADE ME FEEL GOOD (APART FROM PSYCHOTIC MANIA) AND I'M GIVING IT UP! I MUST BE TRULY DERANGED..!!

Rehousing Challenge

I'M GETTING REHOUSED and I'm living in terror. I even know where the house is. It's within easy carting off distance of the nuthouse. I say that because everybody in that house will be raving mad (like me). So now I have to pack a bag or ten and try and feel positive. I don't actually feel very positive at all. When I found out I was in sheer terror, then I fell asleep. Then I'm meant to be changing drugs clinic (again) then I'm meant to change back (again). You see why I don't understand anything? It's incomprehensible.

I've decided yet again to try giving up "gear" for good. Yet again. It does nothing for me. I mean I can't feel the bloody stuff when I take it, so I know I'm wasting my time. I wish I had never got into heroin. I can't believe I'm here now. Me! Talking about me being on heroin. How ridiculous is that. I was never like Anna Grace Young in that all my heroes were junkies and all I ever wanted to do was try heroin. True, I had a sneaking fascination and if someone had presented the naive young me with Drugs of the World on a silver platter saying I could try just one, I probably would have tried the heroin. Because as far as I knew, heroin was the strongest drug there was. So that's the one I would have tried. When I did dabble in drugs, heroin was always in a class of its own. It wasn't available. It was frowned on. The way I saw it, if drugs were bad then all drugs were bad so if you were going to try drugs you might as well try heroin. The fascination was there, but that's all it was. I never intended to become a heroin addict.

If only I could relegate that crappy stuff to the same dustbin every other drug from my past has been chucked in, I'd be OK. I feel no compunction whatsoever to take any other drug ever. My brain can produce a free high anyhow (I now know). Why bother wasting money on drugs to be high? I now get more of a buzz out of Japanese than heroin. Which either says a lot about the Japanese language or a lot about heroin, I don't know.

I keep seeing Chinese characters, not just with my eyes closed but with them open. They appear against blank walls and doors while my head is dreaming. See, I'm a clairvoyant. I can see into life's mysteries... I used to own a crystal ball, but it got left behind in an old house, or stolen. I'm not sure which. I don't need a crystal to scry into, just a blank door will do.

Today, for the first time ever, I was leafing through my kanji dictionary, this huge list of radicals (the graphic components that make up characters) and there were so many of them I couldn't name. And I briefly experienced self-doubt. Usually I view the 2200 basic characters as a linguistic chocolate gateau, to gorge into.

I learned a new one today: 獣 kemono. It means "animal". Because ke can mean fur and a mono is a thing a 毛物 kemono could be a furry thing. Just a 着物 kimono literally means "something to wear". The Chinese reading of 物 mono is 物 butsu, the old slang word for heroin: worlds apart, the words are the same... Butsu means exactly the same as the English word "gear". Another word for animal is 動物 dōbutsu, a "moving thing". I like the way they're so basic in their vocabulary. When you know these words you can actually see the constituent meanings.

Now it's quarter past midnight and my head is spinning. I'm scared to death of moving house. What am I going to do? What's happening? What will happen? I tell myself it has to be a good thing.

PS far as I know the council hasn't OK'd it. So I still might not move. Then I'd be even more disappointed.

PPS far as I know, it's a normal house, not a tower block


An American akita.



These are akita-inus. In the film Hachi, starring Richard Gere, the baby Hachi (an akita) was played by a brushwood dog...

My New Home

I AM GOING TO BE LIVING IN A NEW HOUSE. I don't know when. But within not too long. Mentally supported housing, it's called. That is a mentally ill hostel rather than a mentally all over the place (because everybody here is weird) Emergency Accommodation.

It hasn't been sorted yet, but Deshane is working on it.

I spoke to Naomi tonight who was saying I have to go to a Dual Diagnosis club under a psychotic team.

Now nobody knows whether I should actually be treated by the people I go to see tomorrow because I am housed by one borough and live in another. Nobody is sure. But it seems to me I'm meant to stay as i currently am ie not go to the new place. But Naomi said go anyway and sort it out from there.

Everything is a mess. For once it's not one of my own making.

So I get a new home and hamsters are allowed! (First question I asked.) I want to make the Tubby Swine a new house out of glass with separate burrow compartments etc etc partitioned in the glass. You just use Silicone Sealant to hold the glass apart it's really easy to make a hamsterarium, so I'm told. It needn't even be waterproof, provided it IS only hammies you're using it for...

I couldn't sleep last night so tonight I've taken the risperidone early. It doesn't put me under sleepwise but it keeps me under. My head is lit up with the most beautiful imagery tonight but I'm not feeling hyped up. I feel very tired and I've only taken half of that risperidone. I'm hoping to get really good sleep tonight.

I'm not in the best of moods which isn't a problem as regards sleep. I tend to oversleep when I'm down.

Hey I'm getting a new house a new house a new house. Wow!

Persecution

O SHIT. TWO OFFICIALS FROM THE COUNCIL came round and refused to enter my lair!

Fair enough it is full of rubbish bags that I'm not sure whether or not I accidentally threw my passport into.

I don't know what I did when why wherefore or what to which whatever this that or another thing. Y'know?

To cut a long story short they asked whether I was on drugs and that one confused me I said what psychiatric drugs or street drugs?

We had this conversation on the street because I loudly said my Lovely Charming Best Freind Wankers Who Share This Building Would only earwig on us.

So random dog walkers listened in instead. About yes I'm on methadone no I'm not on heroin I don't care what they know, I put heroin and methadone on the original application form so it's no secret. O yeah and my drink has gone DOWN to 4.5 to 4.7 units a day which equals 33 units a week tops which is just one can over the government's recommended limit. I've switched to strawberry (4.5% vol) and cherry (4.7% vol) flavour cider, two half litre cans a day. See I did it! Cut my drinking down by a third in one go.

Anyway they put me on a real downer saying I'm getting some Vulnerable Adult person after me for not being able to take care of myself. Me my room and my life are now in equal chaos.

I told them I wasn't sleeping at all. I had all of 5 minutes sleep last night. I went to "bed" (on the floor as per usual) for half an hour but my brain was lit up so I just watched inner television, felt irritated then got up.

I felt physically exhausted and nauseated and that was before those nauseating people made it all worse. They were talking to me like I was a 3 year old.

Everyone treats me like I'm a nutter these days. Even that psychiatrist, who's the best shrink I've ever had, judging on impressions, was visibly shocked the first time he saw me when I was "ill" rather than just self-medicating depression on heroin (the state I was in for over five years).

Anyway I'm not hearing voices AT AlL so I can't be mad.

I'm so tired I really want to sleep. I hate sleeping it reminds me of being ill, it makes me think of dying and sleeping is what I do when I'm depressed. The more I sleep the more I'm likely to be depressed and I've already decided if I do get that label Bxxxxxxr stuck on me I'm putting myself to a quick and violent end.

I feel so sad writing that, like my life is a total waste and I regret ever having been born. It would have been so much better if I'd never been born all I have ever done is hurt and disappiont.

Well I'm going to go now. And probably not sleep. I've had enough I've really had enough I wish I could press a button and disappear.

O yeah that's another good thing about being off heroin. It means if I push a quarter ounce straight into my femoral I should never wake up ever again.


1147 Just smashed a bottle open on my cooker the fucking glass is too blunt even to cut my skin open just rubbishy paper cuts can't even do self harm i've had enough i want to sleep i want to sleep i want to sleep fuck this i want to sleep i want to sleep i'm not hearing voices i am perfectly sane i just need to sleep i have no money i blew every penny on dvds i have an entire armchair full now i want to sleep i want to fucking sleep that is all i want to sleep sleep sleep

Nearly Normal...!

... WELL I SHALL BE nearly normal, fairly soon.

The landlord's kindly henchman came by this morning. He mentioned there's still a problem with dirty floors. I pointed out that when you clear as much as I've cleared, clean floors are the last priority. They inevitably get scattered with residue of everything, so Cosmetic Cleaning, I'm afraid, has to wait till last.

I've thrown out ~ literally ~ at least 20 black sacks full of rubbish.

There's still a lot of tidying to do. My clothes need sorting. The 50% or more that don't even fit are due for the hospice shop. Those that are too torn or cigarette-burned to sell on get recycled, so it's all good.

Plus I have a leaning tower of pizza of paperbacks also yearning to be chucked out ~ hopefully sold on at a good £1 each. If only I could find a decent bookshop that takes in second hand books. In my area the second hand book market is a cartel operated by charity shops
who demand all donations FREE. Charity begins at home, MY home. They're getting my clothes free of charge. For my dearly beloved books, I'm afraid, I require a little bit of HARD CASH!

Now I must ping because it's nearly midnight and I wanted to post something on Tuesday.

The real news is in my next post, due in an hour or so ~ HOT NEWS! ~ SIT TIGHT!!

Illustrated: lovely pine floor boards. No mine are nowhere near as clear or as clean as that. And won't be until I move out and some less scruffy bastard moves in!

Clearer

THE MAIN AREA OF MY HOUSE is beginning to approach normality. A cluttered normality with an Everest Heap of clothes in the middle, books to one side all higgledypiggledy because there's too many to stack up... there's still a week's worth of cleaning and clearing to go.

It doesn't quite look like the photo, but it will do. When I win the lottery and move.

If you go away

I'M STILL clearing up. I'm hoping to get the worst of it done by tonight, then I have one clear room. Not completely perfect, but within the bounds of "normality"... At last!

I've thrown away one black bag full of empty sin bins, and I'll have another black sack full of full ones for the exchange! I'm so looking forward to turning up as Junkie of the Year. Not.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: IF YOU GO AWAY
This tune just came on tv. I like:~

Toothpaste stains

I GOT UP AT 4:30 this morning. I feel like I could do with a year's more sleep but there you go. After smoking lots of cigarettes, trotting down the shop for smoked mackerel, Hovis bread and 2 litres of cyder (I'm cutting down) plus my tropical fruit juice (supposedly it's as good for you as eating veg, but I find that hard to believe)... after all this I scurried back home and wasted an hour watching BBC's early morning news and rubbish. The guy presenting used to be ITN's royal correspondent but I can't remember his name. Nick something. Being royal correspondent meant tilting your head slightly and inflecting the voice all sentimental-like whenever mentioning the Queen Mother. I was never convinced the Queen Mum was quite as kindly as portrayed. For one thing HM the Queen appeared, from the vast distance I view her, to be completely under her thumb. Since her Mum's death she seems to have become much more of her own woman. Her fashion sense appears to have improved immensely. The Queen is the funkiest-dressing old woman alive. With the exception of Rosie, the Trance granny who made luminous laurel crowns. I met her at the Warp club (Rosie, not the Queen) under an enormous railway arch round the corner from the London Dungeon, but I had seen her picture in the music press. She was famous for her octogenarian psychedelic ways.

There is a bevy of sparrows down my road. They live in a hedge and chirp their tuneless little heads off every morning. Cheep! Chirp! Twit! Twat! Twitter!! They say. My nightingale, who used to live in the nearest tree to our house is still on migration in West Africa. He or she won't be back until the spring. I know it was a nightingale because I matched the bird by appearance and song. The song was amazing, it tweetled and twittered all night like an LSD canary. I kept my window open especially. O man those sparrows are chirruping LOUD this morning. Sparrows all but disappeared from London about 15 years ago. They used to hang out in flocks along with the pigeons in parks. Even today, though you see them more, they're rare.

HEROIN! I haven't used any since I non-used the other day.. how many days clear am I now..? Seven days. I scored on December 23rd. Just checked me blog. That's the convenience of being a blogger. I know the day and date I did everything. Now I'm off to get my methadone. They're usually open by 8:30. I took half as much methadone as usual yesterday and today and am not feeling it so far... does this make me Addict-Invincible or will a horrible rebound come and slam me with creepytime withdrawal..? I bet it will. But there ya go. I want OFF that crap. The sooner the better. Chemical slavery. Heroin without any fun at all. I hate it.

I've got to go. Those sparrows are distracting me bigtime.

This is the twit-twit jug-jug chirrupydirrupydoodles song of the nightingale:



WOW I can't believe this, this is ROSIE from the Warp on film!!!



Warp Club London 1999: on lots of lovely MDMA hippieflipping I accidentally took 2 Mitsubishis at once in here, fell asleep and woke up flying through the roof. That was a good night (well morning: the club finished at 9pm so I never usually turned up till 6 or 7 in the morning)...
The place looks sparse because it was probably 11am by the time this was shot, and there were at least 5 more rooms of equal or bigger size, it was a HUGE club...
... ukh was the dancing really that terrible? I must have been on drugs!!



Illustrated: wow! a sink dirtier than mine! BBC Breakfast with Dermott Murnughan and Sian somethingorother; HM the Queen, looks good in a hat; a nightingale

Clearer

CLEARNESS IS SLOWLY STARTING TO APPEAR! My cluttered home is steadily decluttering. It's taking a LOT longer than I would like. I think it will take another 10 days to get things totally clear but the rate I'm going it's going very well.

I can't sleep and I'm exhausted. As I said I'm not doing anywhere like as much clearing as I'd like... but it IS being done. I'm so glad.

Everyone have a look at my cat video below; it's fantastic. I like the way he keeps patting the cat and that seems to palcate the poor purrer as it's wrapped in paper with a bow put on its head ...

Illustration: a 1940s housewife would go nuts in my house

2:48am Cleanup

UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS has just just finished on reapeat. The original was only on a few hours ago. This was a classic TV serial about servants and posh people in a London townhouse from my childhood. Now the BBC have brought it back with the same actress playing Rose. If you're across the Pond and get BBC America, watch this, it's A1 costume drama. I like a good costume drama but it does have to be good. Upstairs Downstairs is even better than Downton Abbey. Next week that dreadful Larkrise to Nowhere is back on I cannot stand that.

I've been watching night time television. Prince Charles showed us his bird-chirping garden. The feathery little entertainers were singing their tiny hearts out for the heir to the throne. I'd like a garden like that, but I'd go for 10,000 acres, not just 15.

Now enough about television I have just had pasta in Lloyd Grossman tomato sauce. My Mum bought me the pasta sauce. Normally I'd buy Ragu. A Ragu means you can have five times as many tomatoes as weight as they're evaporated down in an oven dish. Welshcakes Limoncello probably knows how to do this. Her Xmas dinner pictures at her friend's house are amazing.

Now I'm in a buzzy mood. Having woken up feeling vile and dire. Like death warmed up. I said I was cleaning and I did have a stab at it but I basically felt ill so I went back to bed in the afternoon and slept till 9pm. Now I'm up and racing nicely. No I have NOT been taking amphetamines or any other drugs. It's just a natural mood swing. I'm only drinking for medicinal reasons. Keeps the jangly edge off. Now I must go I have to scrub this ******* floor. ******* houses. ******* landlord. ******* life. **** **** **** ****! See I'm being awfully prim by depriving you of my obscenity tirade.

I have to go. Keeping moving keeps me UP. And UP gets the cleaning done. I am crystal clear and shining. Gotta move gotta move gotta MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE MOVE!!

Do you like my blue smiling face? Isn't it amazing. Blue is the best colour. There's nothing unhappy about blue. Blue is a high by itself. Cool blue ....

4:14am: a catalogue of freak accidents in the US. 8 homeless people burned to death in New Orleans, 5 teenagers asphyxiated in Florida motel, 8 injured in ski lift disaster in Maine ...

Oh yeah and a riot at a Moscow airport due to no de-icing spray (no: staff probably drank it!)

HOW TO WRAP A CAT FOR XMAS
This film, with 4,000,000 views so far, provoked "outrage" among humourless animal charities who seem to spend most of their existence flailing about for something to be upset and offended about. I hope they really got their money's worth from this because it's hilarious:

Still here

I WENT TO BED AROUND 3AM, GOT UP AT 7:30AM. I felt dire. I spent an hour in a chair, knocking back methadone and three huge wine glasses of tapwater. I drank so much last night I was actually (slightly) hung over. Buying white cyder in 3-litre bottles was not the good idea I thought it was.

I barely get hangovers now. Somebody told me this has to do with opiate-dependence and I think they were right.

Actually I spent more than an hour in that chair. More like three. Finally at approaching quarter past eleven after two more enormous wineglasses of Hair of the Dog white cyder I'm starting to feel OK.

Everything I said in that earlier post "Gun to my head" was (unfortunately) true.

I got a comment from Gattina just now. Gattina is now a grandmother. She lives in Belgium with her Italian husband. Is German born, but speaks French (and English). In fact she speaks four languages fluently plus Dutch*, which she always says she doesn't speak, but if I can follow it just from knowing German and having studied a tiny bit of Dutch, I know she can. Notice I say "follow" not "speak".

She says I have to do what I have to do and in my mother's words Take Responsibility.

This is the crux of the problem: that's exactly what I tell myself! So why won't I listen?

Anyway who cares about listening; it's doing that counts. So I'm doing what I have to, albeit far FAR more slowly than I'd like. Chucking everything I don't need out out OUT.

*Gattina's grandson lives in Amsterdam and the northern part of Belgium speaks Flemish or Vlaams, as they call it, a dialect of Dutch.

A Gun to my Head

I'M IN TROUBLE WITH MY LANDLORD for being too scruffy. At least I think I am. Downstairs told me this. Downstairs and I do not get on. This is the trouble I have and I can tell you but it doesn't make anything any clearer or less How It Is.

Last time I was in trouble with my landlord (my old landlord) basically for living in a mess, for not coping. A way worse mess than this one, the day I had to go down the council to sort out my housing I had this weird feeling, as if someone had put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger. Instead of feeling pain or stress I just felt unreal. I could not engage with anything. I knew what was happening, but it was not real to me.

That is how I feel now. I should be in a frantic scrabble to clear up, but I'm not. In a way I don't care about anything at all. If I get chucked out I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go on holiday. Or vacation, to you Americans. I will take as much methadone as I can carry. I know where to buy it so I can get a week's supply up front at high doses. This I will cut down drastically on the road. Detoxing makes me hyper. Hyper makes me pace. Pacing is walking. I can get a lot of travelling done by detoxing. If I feel suicidal I'm lucky because there's snow. I need only go to sleep outside and I might be lucky enough to die. But I'm not into dying, as I said I'm going on holiday. I won't say where because people will try and follow me or spy on me. But I'm going.

If I stay here I will turn my home into an operating theatre. But I'm almost hoping to get chucked out. Because I'm fed up of my old life. The problems and non-problems I thought were caused by heroin seemingly aren't. I always knew this was the case. Heroin was only a mask, masking the reality of a person not coping. I don't need heroin to dissociate myself. I don't need heroin as an anaesthetic. I only feel real pain in withdrawal or extreme mood states. My ordinary depression is usually mild enough just to blank me. Most of the time. But I have a nasty tendency to cycle through various mental states and into one when I realize with full weight and intensity What I Have Done. And then I feel very deeply negligent and sorry. Sorry for the hurt I have caused others. And sorry for myself. Usually I don't feel for myself, but sometimes I do, and I hate feeling anything.

So I can live without heroin. Heroin was just a waste of time. I want off these opiates, they're only disabling an already disabled person. The sooner I'm off them the better. If I get made homeless I will have an A1 chance to come off because I will be nowhere near my methadone pharmacy, nowhere near the drug clinic or my "loving mother" who only wants to salve her conscience ~ or the rest of my family who do love me but I pity them for it. I wish I could kill their pain without killing them. (Maybe they would be better off on heroin!)

See I feel sad now because I have written the words of a badly messed up, lost person and I feel that. I can't accept that I am that person. Because if I could I would already be working not to be like that and I cannot do it. I try. I do try, but something invisible and very powerful, like bulletproof glass... something stops me. I wish I had never been born. I hate knowing the World. I don't care what the world knows about me, but I don't want to know the world any more. I never asked to live like this. I never asked to know what I know. I am the sort of idiot who would have bitten that forbidden fruit in Eden. I know. Drugs like Ecstasy, acid, ketamine, mushrooms opened up an understanding of something that is inexplicable to someone who hasn't been there. A kind of knowledge of good. A vision of paradise (on Ecstasy especially). So did heroin: an understanding of Evil. And a desperation you never knew was possible. And feeling it every single day for years on end.

I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything any more. I wish the anaesthesia would come back.

Riddance

I WAS IN A SERIOUSLY ANTIMETHADONE MOOD yesterday wasn't I? I was despairing that I'd ever have a life on methadone. I'm not sure I ever will but I
can try. And if I can't do that, I can get rid of the methadone. Not sure how I'll survive, but I'm determined to try that too.

My current priority is to clear my house, which is in a terrible mess. I have rubbish rubbish rubbish. Stuff I've picked up on the street ~ furniture. A television set also retrieved from the street I haven't even plugged in to see if it works. Clothes, sheets, crap all tangled and strewn. I have about 30 black sacks in readiness for the Great Chucking Out. I threw out quite a lot last week. This week the rest Has To Go. I'm setting a time limit of New Year's Eve, by which time my home shall be gleaming like an operating theatre.

Does anybody know a magic cure for unhappiness? I google stuff on depression and get the same useless DSM Diagnostic Criteria. I don't care about that rubbish or whether it's genetic, environmental, drug-induced or all three (probably all three). I want to know how to get Rid. Along with all that Rubbish. Rid Rid Rid.

Good Riddance, Bad Rubbish!

Stay of execution...

THE IDIOTIC COUNTY COUNCIL have given me a month to get them documentation that they ought really be sending off for themselves. Don't we live in a 24-7 wired-up world? Isn't identity theft on the up? So why don't THEY establish my factuals, instead of leaving it to me to bring in pieces of paper that could really be concocted by anyone with access to a half-decent scanner and laser printer..?

And now for a musical interlude:~

AVE MARIAThis is one of my favourite tunes:

Sorting it out...

TODAY I've an appointment with the evil council who are suing me, taking me to court, sending bailiffs round (I'm surprised a pickup truck sporting mobile guillotine and blood-proof basket with Head-Right Technology (TM) hasn't arrived at my door...
... Well anyway, I sort out the horrible tangle today. (Supposedly.)
Please wish me luck!

Into Town/Bailiff news

I WENT INTO TOWN yesterday, rode the tube for the first time in ages. Once I changed Central Line and sat opposite two Pakistanis, a Somali and a Korean-looking girl and a miserable British business type I felt like I really was in the metropolis.

I went up Tottenham Court Road, where you can stroll for five minutes passing nothing but electronics shops on both sides. The prices weren't as bargainacious as I remember (Argos, a shop that stocks almost everything and you pick from a colour catalogue and collect from local stores where I buy nearly everything in the toasters/kettles/lighting/non-computer electronics league, still beat most of them ~ but Argos only started stocking computers last year) and I tested about 280,000 laptops. I also closed their lids to get a proper idea of how big or small they were, and gently lifted them up ~ which made the Indian assistant in one shop nearly have a coronary. She got straight on her phone. I am sure she took me for a would-be shoplifter. Anyway I found a machine I wanted. But I refuse to fall in love with anything electronic. I suppose at least electronics though they do break down and dislike getting wet are more reliable than most human beings, so at least that is something...

I saw my Mum and Branzie (my stepfather). We had high tea near De Beers' diamond shop (extremely unimpressive display, considering they MINE the things ~ can't they affort proper bulletproof windows? Endless pavé-set sparkly-covered gold and platinum in every window ~ nothing so big as even one single carat to be seen anywhere!

I felt so exhausted I had to go home early. I'm sure they thought it was drugs. No ~ THAT is one of the illnesses everybody thinks is nonexistent but I had for years BEFORE the drug addiction!

Today I went to the council offices. No wonder I couldn't find them before ~ nobody knew where they were even when they were right round the corner, and they were MILES away. Though I DID like the suburban shopping centre ~ bigger than Reading's shops ~ just round the corner. Anyway, the lady I saw rolled her eyes when she saw me trundling up with documents sprouting from every orifice, made SOME sort of sense of them and got me an appointment on Monday with the bod who actually presses "APPROVE" on the computer that pays. THEN, so she says, the thugs can be kept at bay.

And my solicitor telephoned this morning, saying she is faxing everybody left right and centre. She hasn't faxed the prime minister or the queen, but she appears to have faxed everybody else...